Editors’ Introduction
DOI | 10.1177/0020702019873483 |
Published date | 01 September 2019 |
Date | 01 September 2019 |
Author | Jack Cunningham,Brian Bow |
Subject Matter | Editors’ Introduction |
Editors’ Introduction
This issue of International Journal represents something of a departure, with
our usual assortment of scholarly essays complemented by an unusually
high number of policy briefs, which focus more narrowly on timely and indeed
urgent topics.
We open with Tsuyoshi Kawasaki’s imaginative take on Canada’s emergence as
a ‘‘peninsula state,’’ whose strategic choices are framed by climate change in the far
North and the increasingly threatening presence of China as a ‘‘polar power.’’
Then, Basar Baysal looks back at the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
taking a close look at how the George W. Bush administration framed Saddam
Hussein’s putative nuclear ambitions as a security threat. Elena Du
¨ck uses the
ongoing conflict in Syria to frame an exploration of Canadian identity and foreign
policy, focusing on manifestations of ‘‘civilian power’’ such as multilateralism, the
rule of law, and institution-building. Sandra Biskupski-Mujanovic turns our atten-
tion to peacekeeping, where she questions the claim that greater employment of
women leads to more effective peacekeeping operations. And finally, Lee-Anne
Broadhead and Sean Howard contend that the Trudeau government’s lack of
support for an international convention to ban nuclear weapons undercuts its
claims to pursue a feminist foreign policy.
In our first Policy Brief, David Welch points to the shared challenges and values
of Canada and Japan, and argues that these countries should accelerate their ten-
tative steps in the direction of security cooperation, ultimately moving to a formal
alliance. Then, Achim Hurrelmann and his co-authors canvass the prospects for a
bilateral trade agreement between Canada and a post-Brexit United Kingdom,
identifying possible political flashpoints and offering some suggestions on how to
navigate them. Georgi Buzaladze and Andrew Defor assess the role of global
health diplomacy in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals, in order to
spotlight its usefulness in the context of the more recent Sustainable Development
Goals. And finally, David Webster scrutinizes the bilateral relationship between
Canada and Indonesia since 1953, detecting grounds for closer cooperation than
has existed to date.
Our books editor, Brendan Kelly, has curated another selection of timely book
reviews, with contributions from scholars like Charles Burton (on Jonathan
Manthorpe); Kim Richard Nossal (on Fen Hampson); John Kirton (on Daniel
International Journal
2019, Vol. 74(3) 343–344
!The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702019873483
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